The study published in the American journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and signed by scholars at Rutger University, showed that in mice caffeine protects against sun damage and therefore prevents melanomas.
The protective mechanism would involve a protein called Atr: remembering that most proteins are enzymes (i.e., the catalysts of biological systems), this enzyme, going into action to detect DNA damage in skin cells, is highly stressed and "fatigued" when the body is exposed to ultraviolet rays. Therefore, caffeine, by inhibiting Atr, would help to better resist the sun's rays and the damage they cause.
Researchers at Rutger University genetically modified some rodents so that they would not produce Atr in their skin.The modified mice were then exposed to UVB rays three times a week for 40 weeks. Result? The guinea pigs without Atr developed their first tumor three weeks later than normal mice, and after 19 weeks they had 68 percent fewer tumors than normal mice.
In previous research, it had been observed that the bodies of mice given water and caffeine, and then exposed to UVB rays, were able to eliminate ultraviolet-damaged cells with a lower risk of degeneration from healthy to diseased cells. It remains, however, that all rodents exposed to UVB, here both modified and unmodified, ended up developing neoplasms. According to Allan Conney, director of the Susan Lehman Cullman Laboratory for cancer research at Rutgers, "The fact that nonetheless they all eventually become ill indicates that inhibition of the Atr enzyme works best when the skin cells subjected to UVB are still in a precancerous stage, that is, before the tumors caused by photoexposure have fully 'triggered.'" He concludes by saying that "caffeine application might actually prevent sunlight-induced neoplasms."
What to think? Perhaps before we start buying, and slathering on, caffeinated sunscreens that diligent marketing-focused companies may start producing after hearing this news, it is good to wait for more studies and scientific work on this topic for confirmation/deepening.
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